Abstract
Using data from the 2018 Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS), based on the mood-congruent theory, this study aims to explore the mechanisms of mental health on job satisfaction from the internal perspective (psychological capital) and external perspective (social capital). The results showed that (1) the two components of mental health have different effects on job satisfaction. The positive component of mental health had a positive effect on job satisfaction, while the negative component of mental health had a negative effect on job satisfaction; (2) Psychological capital and social capital play a mediating role in the relationship between mental health and job satisfaction. (3) After considering the potential endogenous problems between mental health and job satisfaction and conducting additional robustness analysis, including changing dependent variable and changing independent variable, our main results and influence mechanisms are remain robust and reliable. With the emergence of an increasingly competitive knowledge economy era, employees' mental health plays an important role in job satisfaction. Thus, it is imperative for managers to enhance employees' job satisfaction and better implement humanistic management by nurturing employees' psychological and social capital through the mental health.
Highlights
Mental health is an important indicator of employees’ psychological status, which directly affects their perception of job satisfaction [1]
The positive component of mental health averaged 2.96 and the negative component of mental health averaged 1.54, both indicating that employees have a high level of mental health; The psychological capital averaged 4.16 and the social capital averaged 5.55, indicating that employees’ psychological capital and social capital was slightly higher
The results showed that the mediating effect of social capital between the positive component of mental health and job satisfaction was significant with a 95% confidence interval of (0.015, 0.024), excluding 0, and an indirect effect value of 0.019; the mediating effect of psychological capital between the positive component of mental health and job satisfaction was significant with a 95% confidence interval of (0.021, 0.034), excluding 0, and an indirect effect value of 0.027
Summary
Mental health is an important indicator of employees’ psychological status, which directly affects their perception of job satisfaction [1]. Companies must pay much attention to the employees’ mental health conditions if they want to improve competitiveness. The new changes in organizational environment are likely to cause new implications for the influencing mechanisms between mental health and job satisfaction. Competitive pressures outside the organization would translate into pressures for employees within the organization, which can be detrimental to mental health [6]. This new change of organization environment and new challenges to employees have forced us to rethink the impact of mental health on job satisfaction, and the mechanisms in which mental health can affect job satisfaction is a theoretical question that needs to be answered urgently
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